The present invention relates to magazines used to supply firearms with a steady supply of ammunition and, more particularly, to an improved magazine device for supplying an increased store of primed cartridges to a firearm by means of a casing capable of being inserted into the firearm in reverse directions to load the full supply of stored cartridges during a single round.
In the history of use of repeating firearms, both those of the automatic and semi-automatic varieties, there has existed a longstanding desire to afford the operator with an increased capacity of immediately available ammunition that can be fired in a single round. Driven by this recognized desire for providing increased ammunition capacity to repeating firearms, many design improvements have been presented and made over the years to ammunition magazines that are able to hold a large supply of primed cartridges stored within their structure and be detachably engaged to the firearm structure immediately adjacent to its firing chamber to repeatedly feed the stored cartridges for firing. While these large capacity ammunition magazines found in the prior art have worked effectively for the most part in continuously feeding increased cartridge supplies to the repeating firearms for which they have been designed and developed, there have been some limitations recognized in their handling and reliability particularly due to their bulkiness and complicated working structures that generally rely on the configuration and contours within the chambers of the magazines and the cooperative interactions of spring-loaded follower assemblies commonly disposed within the magazine chambers of these prior art devices to urge the stored ammunition outward and into the firing chamber.
Characteristic of the majority of these relevant large capacity ammunition magazines is a casing compartment that is structurally configured to contain an increased store of cartridges within a specially formed chamber with one or more dividing walls or ribs disposed within the chamber to channel or guide the flow of the cartridges. The structural configuration of the casing compartment varies, but commonly includes a form that is convergent from a fixed bottom to an open top section with some transition in between so that multiple rows/columns of cartridges can be stored and moved upward through the compartment using a single or dual follower assembly and transitioned into a single open mouth at the top. This type of structural characterization applies to the prior art magazine devices of Schillstrom (U.S. Pat. No. 2,217,848), Howard (U.S. Pat. No. 4,472,900), Fitzpatrick et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 8,061,071), and Hogan Jr. (U.S. Pat. No. 8,365,454) all of which operate in a unidirectional fashion. Another type of these increased capacity magazine devices is designed and adapted to feed its stored cartridges in a bidirectional fashion and is required to be removed by the operator after the initial directional feed is depleted and reinserted to feed the remaining store of cartridges. An example of this type of bidirectional feed device is found in the multi-compartment box-magazine shown and described in Owsley (U.S. Pat. No. 2,289,067). This type of bidirectional feed device is seen as useful and helpful from the standpoint of increasing the stored supply of cartridges in a single magazine unit. However, the structural configuration and operational features of the prior art devices of this bidirectional type, as particularly seen in the multi-compartment box-magazine package of Owsley, can be cumbersome and problematic, especially in light of the handling of the magazine that is required by the operator in order to reverse the directional flow of the cartridges. Therefore, a need exists for an improved magazine having increased cartridge storage capacity and the capability of being used and handled with ease and simplicity to rapidly feed the stored cartridges in a bidirectional fashion without undue interruption or difficulty.